What a Facebook Phone Will Look Like: Features and OS

Facebook is reportedly making its own smartphone. The HTC Status (pictured here) was the first phone to have Facebook integration in its hardware and software. Photo: Jon Synder/Wired

We heard it five months ago and we’re hearing it again: Facebook is working on its own smartphone. It’s a rumor that sends the mind reeling with speculation. What, exactly, would a super-social phone even look like?

According to a Wednesday DigiTimes story, Facebook has partnered with HTC on the development of a smartphone. The report says the phone will run on a Facebook-exclusive platform built on top of Google’s Android operating system, and will integrate all of the features and functions available on the social networking site.

On top of that, the smartphone will be fully Facebook-branded — this isn’t just another Facebook-optimized HTC phone like the ChaCha (previously known as the Status) or Salsa. Consumers won’t see the device until the third quarter of 2012 at the earliest, the DigiTimes story states.

‬”If we really want to get visionary about this, then we could talk about NFC and Facebook Credits thereby turned into a universal mobile wallet, used seamlessly for both online and offline purchases.” — Aapo Markkanen‪

‬The DigiTimes report lines up with an AllThingsD story from last November that stated Facebook code-named the project “Buffy.” Facebook could certainly have changed the code name since November, though — perhaps to another late ’90s/early 2000s TV show? Two employees who reportedly worked on the “Buffy” team, Chamath Palihapitiya and Joe Hewitt, have left the company, so it stands to reason that there’s a new team in place, along with a refreshed version of the ultra-secret phone.

While all reports are pointing to an Android-based OS, it seems strange that a Facebook-branded phone would run on Google’s mobile OS. After all, Google+ competes directly with Facebook in the social space, and Google competes directly with Facebook in the larger, all-encompassing internet platform battle. Both companies want your daily online visits, your advertising-friendly eyeballs, and (ultimately) your credit-card numbers.

Then again, the tech industry does have its share of awkward bedfellows. Samsung and Apple are in constant litigation, yet a Samsung spin-off company still makes displays for iOS devices.

“The Facebook phone will go in one of two routes,” Derek Kerton, principal analyst of The Kerton Group, told Wired. “One, it’s an Android phone with Facebook overlay, like the current HTC Sense overlay on Android. Two, it takes Amazon’s Kindle Fire approach and forks Android for Facebook.”

But what about the possibility that Facebook would create its own mobile OS from scratch? “I absolutely don’t think it would make any sense,” Kerton said.

Julie Ask, Forrester analyst, agrees: “It’s unlikely at this stage,” Ask told Wired in an email. “They would need some serious mobile and computer science talent, which they may or may not have. It would delay their time to market. Then there is the whole ecosystem issue of developers — both Blackberry and Windows struggle with this today.”

But doesn’t Facebook have the necessary computer science talent to develop an OS? And while building its own platform wouldn’t make sense in terms of time and effort, does it make any more sense for Facebook to piggyback on a direct competitor’s platform in its first self-branded smartphone?

Kerton says yes.

“It’s a beautiful jiujitsu move,” Kerton said. “Using your enemy and their power, and using that against them. The world is full of competition, and there’s no reason you can’t take Android and put your social application front and center.”

Whether the Facebook phone runs on Android, its own OS or something else (WebOS or Mozilla’s B2G?) the phone will naturally be centered around the social network’s features. One can easily imagine all of Facebook’s features on a smartphone, where the phone’s contacts, messages and photos all tie into a user’s Facebook friends, messages and photos (Instagram much?). A Facebook phone would also make it incredibly easy to see your news feed, post status updates, ‘like’ posts, and directly upload photos to your status feed or albums.

According to earlier reports, the Facebook phone will include HTML5 support for applications. The social networking giant already has an ecosystem of developers willing to create apps for the web-based Facebook, so it’s in a good position to nudge developers in this direction.

It’s also easy to imagine that Facebook phone users would be able to play games made by Zynga, listen to music through apps likes Spotify, and get their morning headlines from newsreader apps from the Washington Post, Yahoo and others. (Of course, not everyone is a fan of Facebook apps in their current incarnation, so we can only hope that a mobile experience will be different.)

“If we really want to get visionary about this, then we could talk about NFC and Facebook Credits thereby turned into a universal mobile wallet, used seamlessly for both online and offline purchases,” Aapo Markkanen, ABI Research analyst told Wired in an email. “They could even loan you money one day, profiling your credit-worthiness according to your social graph.”

“But that’s admittedly a little futuristic,” Markkanen added.

In terms of hardware, don’t expect a HTC ChaCha lookalike with a QWERTY keyboard. The phone will most likely look similar to recent Android and Windows Phone smartphones, featuring a large touchscreen and minimal physical buttons. And considering the company’s recent Instagram purchase, it would make sense for the phone to have a high-quality camera.

Though we’re pretty sure the Facebook phone is happening, the details are all speculation until Facebook and its hardware partner, whether its HTC or another manufacturer, reveals its plans.

When asked about its smartphone project, Facebook provided Wired with the same statement it provided five months ago:

“We don’t comment on rumor and speculation.
Our mobile strategy is simple: we think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

HTC provided a similar statement, “HTC does not comment on rumors or speculation.”